This invention relates to protective garments, and more particularly to a protective shock absorbing jacket for wear by a person, such as a batter while up at bat during a baseball game.
Shock absorbing equipment has long been known and used where shock attenuation is required. For example, to reduce the trauma inflicted upon people in vehicle collisions, closed-cell foam materials have been used in automobile dash boards, sand-filled barrels have been deployed about highway obstructions, and air-bags that inflate upon vehicle impact have been used in passenger compartments. Raw cotton and wool batting have been used for padding and packaging needs, and both batting and inflatable members have been used in clothing and in athletic equipment.
Athletic equipment, such as shoulder pads, chest/rib protectors, thigh pads, shin guards and so forth are commonly worn by participants in a great variety of sports in which body contact with either another participant or with a piece of equipment used in the sport presents a danger of physical injury. Such equipment has long been known and used by athletes in contact sports such as football, hockey and the like.
One type of known prior art athletic equipment for use in contact sports includes a relatively hard outer shell of leather, vulcanized fiber, or similar material, and an inner layer of soft padding material. So constructed, the hard outer layer receives the applied force or shock and serves to spread the force over a large area where it is absorbed and cushioned by the soft padding material. Known prior art padding materials include cotton batting, foam rubber, foam plastic material, sponge rubber, expanded rubber and vinyl and the like, with the resilience of such materials tending to absorb a portion of the applied force.
Another known type of athletic equipment used in contact sports includes an inflatable balloon-like structure which is inflated with air to a pressure above one atmosphere and then sealed to maintain the air within the structure. When a force is imparted to such a structure, a portion of the air volume within the structure immediately adjacent the point of contact on the structure is forced to another region within the structure causing the entire structure to balloon. This ballooning effect tends to redistribute the applied force in the same manner that stepping on one end of an elongated balloon redistributes the applied force to the other end of the balloon causing that other end to bulge.
Known prior art athletic equipment for use in baseball include devices designed to be worn by the catcher to protect his chest and various other parts of his body. Such known equipment is bulky and cannot readily be worn by a batter while up at bat without limiting and hampering the batter's performance.
The known prior art equipment cannot effectively be used by a batter. Moreover, the known prior art equipment does not effectively reduce the force actually imparted to the wearer to a negligible value.